D&D General Do people like re-skinning?
- Thread starter nomotog
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Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
In general I'm a huge fan of reskinning. Some other visual that fits the mechanical is great. I do it all the time as a DM, and occasionally as a player. Look, the spore druid's (death cycle) Shillelagh is now a femur instead of a stick. This Champion fighter comes across like a precise master of the rapier, while that Champion fighter comes across as a hard hitting maul fanatic.
One issue reskinning specifically in D&D is that the amount of flavor varies so much. Want your dagger to look like a kris? Easy. Want your radiant damage to be beams from your eyes, or light from your holy symbol? Okay. Reskinnign a hobgoblin as a veteran soldier. Works great. But others are seeped in theme. It's hard to reskin some of the warlock stuff because the mechanics strongly support the theme - which I like. And paladins have mechanical effects of breaking their oaths.
One issue reskinning specifically in D&D is that the amount of flavor varies so much. Want your dagger to look like a kris? Easy. Want your radiant damage to be beams from your eyes, or light from your holy symbol? Okay. Reskinnign a hobgoblin as a veteran soldier. Works great. But others are seeped in theme. It's hard to reskin some of the warlock stuff because the mechanics strongly support the theme - which I like. And paladins have mechanical effects of breaking their oaths.
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But in that case you create an elven magic sword, its only magic properties is the fact that it is light, finesse and versatile and does 1d8 damage.
Yeah, that would work fine, and is an excellent example of a successful use of reskinning.
Eltab
Lord of the Hidden Layer
In 4e, I re-wrote the descriptive text for my Star Pact Warlock's powers to make an astronomy / astrology theme, instead of Far Realm madness. Eye of Jupiter used the by-the-book mechanics but dropped the Great Red Spot over my enemies to suck them away.
Moderation and restraint should be the byword of any who seek to meddle with the fabric of reality.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I have extremely mixed feelings about it, myself.
Done right, it's seamless, you can't tell it ever happened, and it works really, really well, and means it costs you far less time and effort. 4E allowed the re-skinning of monsters in such a way (via the DDI particularly) that it was virtually impossible, short of forensic analysis, to determine that it had happened.
Done poorly, or with bad choice of material, it's dreadful, and can be deeply anti-immersive, and think can lead to some really unhelpful suggestions on how to approach/deal with certain issues.
Most often I see it done will with re-skinning monsters. This tends to be highly successful as they are subject to limited scrutiny and the players frequently will never even know the mechanics they use, merely the results. I see it done poorly most often with classes, particularly where a class has extremely strong or distinctive mechanics. People can be prone to saying, rather dismissively, "just reskin X class as Y idea!", and yeah sometimes that works, but sometimes it really doesn't. Not that long ago I saw someone try to continue a 4E character into 5E, and the closest he could get was a heavily re-skinned Warlock (also re-skinning a race as another race). I suggested he should probably make a new character, or re-work the concept on a more basic level, but he went with it, and he clearly didn't enjoy it, and it kept sort of breaking down, the illusion faltering, as it were.
I'm kind of surprised but glad to see a lot of people not the potential issues with it!
Done right, it's seamless, you can't tell it ever happened, and it works really, really well, and means it costs you far less time and effort. 4E allowed the re-skinning of monsters in such a way (via the DDI particularly) that it was virtually impossible, short of forensic analysis, to determine that it had happened.
Done poorly, or with bad choice of material, it's dreadful, and can be deeply anti-immersive, and think can lead to some really unhelpful suggestions on how to approach/deal with certain issues.
Most often I see it done will with re-skinning monsters. This tends to be highly successful as they are subject to limited scrutiny and the players frequently will never even know the mechanics they use, merely the results. I see it done poorly most often with classes, particularly where a class has extremely strong or distinctive mechanics. People can be prone to saying, rather dismissively, "just reskin X class as Y idea!", and yeah sometimes that works, but sometimes it really doesn't. Not that long ago I saw someone try to continue a 4E character into 5E, and the closest he could get was a heavily re-skinned Warlock (also re-skinning a race as another race). I suggested he should probably make a new character, or re-work the concept on a more basic level, but he went with it, and he clearly didn't enjoy it, and it kept sort of breaking down, the illusion faltering, as it were.
I'm kind of surprised but glad to see a lot of people not the potential issues with it!
One of the things I like to do with monsters is to take something iconic, like a Troll say, and reskin a bunch of variants, usually because the monster in question is going to be the poster child for an upcoming arc. I'll add some range CR-wise, and often have a little bit of fun messing about with the tropes, like making one variant not vulnerable to fire. Sometimes I like to use the reskin to step outside the confines of the MM and present the players with something they haven't seen before, but might realize after some experience works like X beast they are familiar with. It's good for the immersion.
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